Le revenu universel - Intermediate French

What wonderfully clear thinking. Merci, Hugo. I forgive you for dumping the nastiness of Michel Houllebecq on me.

But what if it were true that the Russians paid the Taliban bounty money for killing U.S. and "Coalition" merceneary soldiers in Afghanistan? So fucking what?

In the very first place, by their mere presence in Afghanistan, these our mercenary soldiers, and those of our "Allies," are perpetrating a warcrime, for which they bloody well deserve to be shot. Which has been the basic, correct, position taken by the Taliban all along, I think, quite independently of any monetary reward that might have been offered. Because the extortionate, and illegitimate, national government of the country that I happen to be born in pays their wages, doesn't make them my troops: Kill them as you like.

What I'm arguing for, Ladies,

is the right not to take you seriously.

"Russian Bounties" (supposedly paid to the Taliban for murdering U.S. and Allied soldiers in Afghanistan) is utter silly, stinking Bullshit.

The CIA says it's so--Is further proof necessary that it is not so?

When has the CIA ever asserted a thing that was so?

But what a stupid, malicious, and deliberate lie. Of course the fascist oligarchy/plutarchy wants us to believe that Russia is our enemy. Because that gives them full ownership of every damned last thing in the world in the name of saving us from it. But it's still transparent, and rather clumsy, bullshit.

Tacos, burritos, nachos... Quelle est la vraie cuisine mexicaine ? - La ...

Truthfully, Myself I'm rather hung between, in not always comfortable suspense, French and Mexican cuisines. It's funny how bravely the French try to like Mexican food--and just can't, quite. I'll bet the Dutch could wrap their heads around the Mexican palate, as they have done with Indonesian and Chinese cuisines; but the French are going to need time (I'd guess a decade or more) to adjust to those bewildering capsicums and outlandish sauces.

¿If Rudolf Steiner, why not T. Lobsang Rampa?

A Nero Wolfe Mystery S01E01 The Doorbell Rang

It so happens that many people (not just me), including Rex Stout, from the very beginnings of J. Edgar Hoover and his fascist paramilitary enterprise, have loathed and denounced him and it. Whereof (of loathing and denunciation) this beautifully composed television murder mystery is a prime example.

Feeding Wild Birds

is something we end up doing when we eat our lunch out of doors. Whether Buddhist or Pagan, we are grateful for our food, and for the fact that there are, still, wild birds in our world whose existence can be alleviated and prolonged, at least in part, with the crusts of our sandwiches. Unlike, it is unspeakably sad to say, China, where there are no wild birds, they having all been eaten by big-brained, but heartless, Chineses.

We begin, tossing our crumbs to the birds we love (sparrows, finches, thrushes and jays)--and find ourselves at the end having a crisis of conscience when, to our dismay, we discover that the crumbs of our crumbs are eagerly besought and devoured by birds that we don't like particularly (doves and pigeons). The fault, of course, is in our loving some, and in permitting ourselves not particularly to like others: I am, after all, a sound, sad Buddhist--Ch'an, Nichiren, Pure Land.

Reading the Gay History of Piracy in the Carribean--

What you see is a society based on an uncompensated work-force, preyed upon by its own twenty-something, male outcasts and dropouts. You'd think there'd have been more actual cannibalism than there was--and if those swashbucklers had been straight (heterosexual)--there probably would have been. ¿What is the difference between a bar full of heterosexual young men, and a bar full of gay young men?--The diminished level of violence in the latter.

¿D'you know, I'm something of a Milton scholar--

I've read Ad Patrem. I can recite the beginnings of Paradise Lost and Lycidas from memory. I even know pretty much what Areopagitica is about. I'm deeply conscious of the contents of our poet's travelling case when he got back from Italy. And  of course I am ravished by the doric delicacy of Comus, maybe even more than I am captivated by the Rape of the Lock. 

But what I still don't get, quite, is why he (John Milton Jr.) was a Christian. I have to conclude that maybe he wasn't. I'm not, ça va sans dire. And yet--funny thing--the first piece of real music I ever wrote (and probably the last thing that I shall ever write as well, if I get cracking on that Striker Requiem), was a motet in the Neo-Tallis mode which is, apparently, my native idiom. And, as I have tried to explain to Sister Rose, this is not insincerity on my part, nor at all even a deviation from my revolutionary queer-atheist agenda, but is simply a matter of artistic integrity: Real composers (like John Milton Sr., and me), of real music, can, as required, write religious music that gives no offense to the faithful--it's part of the job. So it might have been with John Jr., I'll allow. We know him to've been an arrant Arminian and a Monist, virtually a Unitarian--and that is but a degree from complete disbelief in the Trinity.

Flashback: I'm in Perugia, twenty years ago, in the refectory of a thousand-year-old way-station, built (of stone) by the Knights Hospitalers (with arrow slits), and a sour, but polite, Italian priest telling me, in Italian, that Caravaggio was a "troubled" man.

What one discovers, when one discovers that one is gay (and one is, of course, male),

is that one's very own likes--and dislikes--are not one's own. One is born loving some things, and--yes, alas, Ladies--loathing others. Cock, for example, and (shudder, grimace) Vagina. Even if one is a switch-hitter.

Millennial Owned Cannabis Farm in Oregon Grows Over 3 Pounds per Light!

At 13:16 the cleft-chinned young hero of this narrative enunciates the clearest, and most polite, verbal depiction of the fundamental philosophical difference between the intrinsically corrupt, Mafia-ridden East Coast of America, and the Pacific States (Oregon) that I have ever heard (or read in sub-titles).

A word to the "Transgendered" about your "pronouns": Shut the fuck up. Your dysphoria is none of my business, and nothing that I wish to consider; and your calling it to my attention is an intolerable imposition on me.

Die--if your existence depends on my acknowledgment of it.

Just Friends

Possibly the worst written movie I have ever seen (and I paid for it). The narrative died about halfway through, and sporadic subsequent efforts (unfortunately filmed) to resuscitate it served only to protract the agony.

Trump Organization ("Trump and his two idiot sons, Don Jr. and Eric") Begs For Rent Forgiveness For Florida Golf Course

Immortal words, Mr. Cousins--"Idiot sons" is exactly what they are. 

Suda - The Painting Elephant

Could we talk for a minute about the evolutionary--and cosmological--implications of lady-elephants who sign their brush drawings?

The first black person I ever met,

when I was three or four years old, was a porter on the milk-run train that used to go, still on its Wartime schedule (in, say, 1946), between the miniscule villages of LaCrosse and Hay, Washington--eight miles apart, over the rolling fields of wheat. He was immense--300+ pounds--in his immaculate porter's uniform, and I was curious to know, and asked him pointblank, how he kept himself clean, if the blackness of his skin wouldn't wash off in soap and water, as my mother had assured me that it didn't. The basso profundo of his reply, and his embarrassment, was a revelation to me.

Let's Talk About Hard-to-Say American Place Names

Ill-bred, abused children. Which explains the envy and rancor you often notice in Brits towards American children--apparently because American kids are not,  or have not been, abused or deprived as they were.

My Verdict on American Mead (Honey Wine)

Fair enough. I remember drinking mead with Sue Weaver, and her twitting me on my literary bias towards (that I should find "exquisite/delicious") the heroic substance-drink. Mr. Brown is not so perplexed--and much more evenly judicious than I was at three and twenty. But in general I may say, that I find the British national characteristic (if they have one), of being cute about alcoholic drink, to be distasteful (childish, in a neurotic, smart-ass/petulant sort of way); rather like their unpleasantly, too-specifically feculent toilet humour, and their quite disobliging presumption of your bad faith in complimenting them. Come to think of it, those are the attributes of ill-bred children.

How To Cover These Police Riots - SOME MORE NEWS

Of course.  But special thanks for the reminder that, contrary to the most elementary principles of justice and decency, "assett forfeiture" (legalised looting by cops) is a fact of fucking life in America.

Police Assault Elderly Man, Then Walk Over Him As He Bleeds From Head Wound

Two Queens that I have heard say so--Elizabeth II of England, and Margrethe II of Denmark--have both defined the Queenship as "a job."

So did Elizabeth (Tudor) I, pretty much, come to think of it. Apparently it's a reality that they all had to come to grips with.

¿All this Drama--just to get dumb Joe Biden elected?

Modern Classics Summarized: Stranger In A Strange Land

Thanks, I had forgot. I used, in my days of innocence, to read a lot of science fiction, and among my best loved authors was Robert Heinlein. I have read, and forgotten, Stranger in a Strange Land several times,

All four officers in George Floyd case to be charged by Minnesota AG

Now we're getting somewhere. Noted both with satisfaction and dismay: Mass protest seems to work.

Among the many things that Americans do not understand, and cannot understand, is that, since Military Conscription has been effectively abolished in America, American Troops, and Cops, are (there because they're paid to be there) Mercenaries:

Accountable, really, to no one. Terrorists (i.e., enemies of humanity) at heart.

The Country Burns as Leadership Fails 6/1/20

I like that unser Argentine Jew, David Pakman does not have a single lens to view the mess we're in through. But has he no sense of something brilliantly, and with some sense of irony, staged? Could he be evading clandestine purpose?

Trump: I Am Deploying Military on U.S. Soil To Put Down Protests

"Teetering"? Seems like I heard someone saying "Man Overboard"--unless it was sauve qui peut--quite some time ago.

‘People are suffering, and it can be stopped with us’: Conversation wit...

Protests Erupt, American Society Breaks Down

Why Is It So Hard to Convict Police of Murder?